History Today

Richard Cavendish reflects on the growth of the Clark's shoe industry.

Teenage pregnancy and street gossip – but also lessons in housekeeping and good husbandry. Jeremy Goldberg draws on contemporary documents to assess the pluses and minuses of entering adulthood as a woman in the late Middle Ages.

Alan Steinweis considers how a Victorian historian's hero-worship became entangled with the propaganda visions of the Nazis a century later.

Aidan Rankin examines the struggle of the Wichí Indians of North Argentina who fight back against discrimination in their daily lives.

Glen Jeansonne outlines how US involvement radically transformed American culture and society.

Eberhard Jackel draws on Nazi security reports to chart the change in German public opinion in the last year of the war and discusses the shifts in psychology that have enabled modern Germany to come to terms with, and move on from, the crimes of the Third Reich.

Previously unpublished account of a British veteran, caught up as a POW in the Allied bombing of Dresden. Dick Sheehy recounts his experiences in and around the annihilated city and of life later as an escapee on the road in Germany, coming across the French, Russians and Americans, while the Third Reich disintegrated in the spring of 1945.

Their finest hour - Angus Calder takes a critical look at the credits - and debits - of Britain's contribution to the Second World War and asks if a 'spirit of the Blitz' myth-mentality has helped or hindered the country's post-war development.

From Hitler's suicide to the Berlin blockade - Friedemann Bedurftig looks at the consequences of defeat, the process of denazification and reconstruction and the growing Cold War tensions between the former Allies in charge of the ruins of the Third Reich.